News from the Library of Congress

June 24, 1996

Library of Congress and British Library Sign Cataloging Policy Agreement

Winston Tabb, Associate Librarian at the Library of Congress, and
Stuart Ede, acting Director of Acquisitions Processing and
Cataloguing at the British Library, have signed a Memorandum of
Agreement on Convergence of Cataloguing Policy.

The agreement puts into effect the provisions of a prior
agreement, Cataloguing Policy Convergence Agreement (CPCA), aimed
at aligning cataloging practices between the two institutions,
especially regarding access points. Although the Library of
Congress and the British Library share a common cataloging code,
Anglo-American Cataloging Rules 2 (AACR2), differences in policy
and the context in which particular headings were established had
resulted in cases in which differing forms of headings were used
for the same entity.

"The Cataloging Policy Convergence Agreement has finally
achieved, or nearly so, the goal pursued for nearly a century of
bringing into a common framework the cataloging practices of the
United States and Great Britain," said Mr. Tabb. "AACR and AACR@
greatly narrowed the differences, but in the area of name
headings, the CPCA has finally settled most of the remaining
differences and pointed the direction toward solving the rest.
It provides a firm foundation upon which the Library of Congress
and the British Library can pursue their cooperative
bibliographic ventures."

Mr. Ede noted that "the CPCA between the Library of Congress
and the British Library marks another important step toward
breaking down the artificial barriers to the exchange of
bibliographic information across the Atlantic. The British
Library attaches great importance to this and to the removal of
similar barriers in Europe. I look forward to the time when
there is truly unfettered interchange of catalog records across
national boundaries, taking full advantage of the massive
improvements in telecommunications worldwide."

Groundwork for the agreement, signed February 26, was laid
in spring 1993, when the British Library expressed interest in
exploring how the two national libraries could
reconcile differences in cataloging practices to facilitate
international exchange of bibliographic and authority records.

In addition to the duplication of effort in establishing the
headings, the different forms used created a barrier to effective
sharing of cataloging because of the need to adjust headings from
the "U.K. form" to the "U.S. form" or vice-versa.

Compromises were made on both sides, with the result, as
stated in the CPCA, that the Library of Congress and the British
Library have now reached agreement on a common interpretation of
AACR2 with regard to the formulation of access points for most
names. The parties continue to explore strategies for resolving
variations.

The British Library has mounted the U.S. National Authority
File on its own system and has already begun to make use of
existing headings where agreement on practice has been reached.
The British Library is also contributing new and altered headings
to the shared authority file. This contribution to NACO
(National Coordinated Cataloging Operations) will increase
significantly during 1996 and, in the future, the forms of
headings in the British Library's Name Authority List (BLNAL)
will be gradually superseded by the equivalent LC/NACO headings
to create a truly international joint authority file.

This Anglo-American file will reduce duplication of effort
and costs in establishing headings and provide greater
consistency in headings used in cataloging records created on
either side of the Atlantic. Together with programs on achieving
alignment of MARC (machine-readable cataloging) formats and
subject authorities, these developments indicate the growing
strength of the cooperative relationship between the two
institutions.